Socialism is the fire department saving your house. Capitalism is the insurance company denying your claim.
I make the needed corrections here…
Socialism
Socialism is when the workers own the means of production (businesses, factories).
This can be done through a co-op, stock purchases, or state nationalization.
Only the last version requires force. The coercive version of socialism has led to poverty (and often mass death) everywhere it’s been tried.
A welfare state is not socialism, though socialist governments will also be welfare states. Many people are confused about this. For instance…
The United States is a welfare state, but not a socialist one.
In the 50s, 60s, and 70s many European states had strong elements of socialism in the form of large nationalized companies and industries. Most of these nationalized firms were sold off in the 80s because of poor performance.
People like Bernie Sanders didn’t get the message. They still think the Scandinavian countries are socialist. They’re not. They’re capitalist free markets with robust social safety nets. You might call this a mixed economy if you want, but it’s definitely not socialism. Venezuela and North Korea are socialism.
Fire fighting
A fire company can be volunteer, tax-funded, or commercial. All three work. None of these means of providing firefighting services have anything to do with traditional socialism.
Capitalism
Capitalism is about delaying gratification (saving money) so as to accumulate capital. This capital is then used to buy tools that expand production. Expanded production permits increased consumption later. This is why capitalist societies have better standards of living than socialist nations.
The production tools capitalism funds can either be purchased directly (as with a journeyman carpenter buying a saw) or indirectly by investing in a stock company that assembles tools in a factory.
Anyone who has savings or investments is a capitalist.
Insurance claims
Some capital is invested in insurance companies. Most insurance companies pay legitimate claims most of the time. If they did not do so no one would buy the product, and if no one bought the product no one would invest capital in it.
Conclusion
A lot of people talk a lot of rot about socialism and capitalism. They should stop.
There is no contest. The Arab citizens of Israel have more freedom and justice than the Arab citizens of a Palestinian state would have. That means Israel should rule. Please understand…
The “free Palestine” slogan is an oxymoron. A Palestinian state would be an authoritarian hellhole.
The Palestinians have an honor culture with heaping helpings of Islamic fundamentalism and jihad enthusiasm.
We are constantly told that peace will come if Israel tears down its settlements in the West Bank and agrees to create a Palestinian state there, and in Gaza. But Israel did exactly that in Gaza and Northern Samaria (on the West Bank) in 2005. This action created a de facto Palestinian state in Gaza. But no peace resulted.
Hamas defeated its Palestinian rival Fatah in 2007 and took complete control of Gaza. Hamas then attacked Israel the following year. Israel defeated Hamas and signed a peace agreement with them. But the peace agreement didn’t bring peace.
Hamas attacked Israel again in 2012, 2014 and 2021. Israel retaliated and destroyed a large part of Gaza. Hamas then signed another peace treaty with Israel, but then Hamas massacred and raped Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
If people individually own themselves and have a right to be free of aggressive force, then they have a right to change their location in ways consistent with other people’s rights. Whether you call this moving around relocating, emigrating, or immigrating, doesn’t much matter. The default position is that each individual may rightfully move to somewhere else permanently or temporarily.
Inside the United States, nobody questions this. People freely move from state to state, etc., sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. They need no one’s permission.
Why should things be different when we talk about countries rather than smaller jurisdictions and when the individuals who do the moving are not recognized as citizens of the destination country? An opponent of the freedom to move might begin by rejecting self-ownership and nonaggression, so the argument with him would take place at that basic level. But what if the opponent of the freedom to move espouses support for self-ownership and nonaggression? That’s a different kettle of fish.
Remarkably, both kinds of opponents make a similar case for why government control of the borders is necessary. Starting from a different basis, they agree on the alleged need for coercive social engineering by politicians and bureaucrats, who might be pursuing agendas that most people would want no part of.
We often hear it said that just as no one has a right to enter your home without your permission, so no one has a right to enter the country without the permission of the purported equivalent of the owner. That owner is said to be “the people,” in whose name the government claims to act. The truth of the matter is different.
I can see a collectivist taking this shaky position, but an individualist advocate of self-ownership? A country isn’t a home. It’s not a country club either. Homes and country clubs are rooted in private property and voluntary contract. But a country is not. The view that a country is owned at all has been the basis of collectivism and tyranny.
A property owner may decide he doesn’t want someone or some group to enter his property. Fine. But by what right does he impose his rule on other property owners? It does not matter if a majority of property owners and others likes his rules. The dissenting minority — individuals with rights — might welcome newcomers as potential employees, employers, tenants, landlords, customers, sellers, friends, romantic partners, or what have you. Majorities shouldn’t be able to nullify the rights of dissenters or those of aspiring migrants.
Relocation in itself violates no rights. If a rights violation occurs, that should be dealt with, not the relocation. We can always imagine dire emergencies — “Let justice be done though the heavens fall” is a dubious principle — but this does not justify routine militarized border control, walls and fences, internal checkpoints, employment databases, etc. By definition, dire emergencies are the exception. The words “Show me your papers” should make Americans (and everyone else) cringe.
People today, like in the past, imagine that they see signs of cultural decline and threats to democracy from foreign-born newcomers. When I hear the latter fear expressed, I want to reply sardonically, “We’re capable of growing our own anti-freedom voters, thank you. We need no help from foreigners.” Seriously, though, who can be sure how immigrants will vote in the future, especially if their alternatives include a strong freedom party that welcomes newcomers? Meanwhile, let’s work on shifting the public’s business from the flawed democratic arena to the realm of private property, contract, and social cooperation in the free market.
As for the wish to protect the culture from change, nothing so surely spells tyranny. Imagine what would have to be done to carry out such a plan. Who would you want to run the cultural ministry? It wouldn’t work, of course, but trying would be a road to hell. Besides, do you want to live in a place without a constant flow of new restaurants? And why stop at the change that originates outside the country? What about the sometimes radical change that occurs from domestic sources?
The logic of immigration control ought to worry every freedom advocate — for we can ask, as noted, why stop at national borders? Why not control movement between states, counties, cities, towns, and neighborhoods? (Maybe I shouldn’t given anyone ideas.) If you can’t accomplish a goal through voluntary exchange, then leave it alone.
That control mentality blinds people. As Bryan Caplan points out, when poor people move to rich places, their productivity skyrockets, so they make not only themselves better off, but also the people around them. Yes, some unskilled high-school dropouts would see some decline in income because of competition from new workers who speak little English. Change — progress — always has a relatively small short-term downside for a few people. But even they, and most certainly their children and grandchildren, will be better off: more goods, lower prices, more employees, more employers, and a larger variety of offerings, not to mention fresh energy and cultural stimulation.
As Oscar W. Cooley and Paul L. Poirot wrote in a 1951 Foundation for Economic Education pamphlet, “The Freedom to Move”:
Can we hope to explain the blessings of freedom to foreign people while we deny them the freedom to cross our boundaries? To advertise America as the “land of the free,” and to pose as the world champion of freedom in the contest with communism, is hypocritical, if at the same time we deny the freedom of immigration as well as the freedom of trade. And we may be sure that our neighbors overseas are not blind to this hypocrisy.
A community operating on the competitive basis of the free market will welcome any willing newcomer for his potential productivity, whether he brings capital goods or merely a willingness to work. Capital and labor then attract each other, in a kind of growth that spells healthy progress and prosperity in that community. That principle seems to be well recognized and accepted by those who support the activities of a local chamber of commerce. Why do we not dare risk the same attitude as applied to national immigration policy?
Barbara Diane (Tobin) Amacher was born on June 4th, 1947, in Bay City Michigan to Robert and Audrey Tobin. Barb was the eldest of six kids and took her role as big sister to heart even setting up pretend classes for the little ones. After graduating from St. Joseph’s K-12, she attended Central Michigan University where she graduated with a degree in teaching. Barb taught for four and a half years at Walsh Elementary in Utica Schools before having to step back due to being diagnosed with Lupus. On July 4th, 1973, she met the love of her life and was married May 4th, 1974, to Richard Amacher. Together they settled into marriage in Rochester Hills and adopted their son, Matthew, in 1980 and their daughter, Meghan, in 1984. Barb thrived in her role as mother and raised two children that absolutely adore her. Barb had many titles in her 76 years including wife, daughter, mother, sister, niece, aunt, friend, teacher, tutor, and her favorite, Grandma. Barb had lifelong friendships and truly impacted those she met whether it was for 5 minutes or a lifetime. Barb was an avid gardener, reader, traveler, bird watcher, puzzle completer to name just a few. She fought bravely for almost 50 years and decided she had had enough. She made the bravest decision to enter hospice at home on 10/13/2023 and she passed peacefully on Sunday October 15th, 2023, surrounded by her loved ones. Barb will be deeply missed, and everyone was better off for knowing her.
With the commencement of an impeachment inquiry this week, the House of Representatives is moving the Biden corruption scandal into the highest level of constitutional inquiry. After stonewalling by the Bidens and federal agencies investigating various allegations, the move for a House inquiry was expected if not inevitable.
An impeachment inquiry does not mean that an impeachment itself is inevitable. But it dramatically increases the chances of finally forcing answers to troubling questions of influence-peddling and corruption.
As expected, many House Democrats — who impeached Donald Trump after only one hearing in the House Judiciary Committee, based on his phone call to Ukraine’s president — oppose any such inquiry into President Biden. House Republicans could have chosen to forego any hearings and use what I called a “snap impeachment,” as then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did with the second Trump impeachment in January 2021.
Instead, they have methodically investigated the corruption scandal for months and only now are moving to a heightened inquiry. The House has established a labyrinth of dozens of shell companies and accounts allegedly used to transfer millions of dollars to Biden family members. There is now undeniable evidence to support influence-peddling by Hunter Biden and some of his associates — with Joe Biden, to quote Hunter’s business partner Devon Archer, being “the brand” they were selling.
The suggestion that this evidence does not meet the standard for an inquiry into impeachable offenses is an example of willful blindness. It also is starkly different from the standard applied by congressional Democrats during the Trump and Nixon impeachment efforts.
The Nixon impeachment began on Oct. 30, 1973, just after President Nixon fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor looking into the Watergate allegations. The vote in the judiciary committee was along party lines. The House was correct to start that impeachment inquiry, although House leaders stressed that they were not prejudging the existence of impeachable offenses. The inquiry started roughly eight months before any indictments of defendants linked to the Watergate break-in. It was many months before clear evidence established connections to Nixon, who denied any wrongdoing or involvement.
Every impeachment inquiry is different, of course. In this case, there is a considerable amount of evidence gathered over months of methodical investigations by three different committees.
Consider just five established facts:
First, there appears to be evidence that Joe Biden lied to the public for years in denying knowledge of his son’s business dealings. Hunter Biden’s ex-business associate, Tony Bobulinski, has said repeatedly that he discussed some dealings directly with Joe Biden. Devon Archer, Hunter’s close friend and partner, described the president’s denials of knowledge as “categorically false.”
Second, we know that more than $20 million was paid to the Bidens by foreign sources, including figures in China, Ukraine, Russia and Romania. There is no apparent reason for the multilayers of accounts and companies other than to hide these transfers. Some of these foreign figures have allegedly told others they were buying influence with Joe Biden, and Hunter himself repeatedly invoked his father’s name — including a text exchange with a Chinese businessman in which he said his father was sitting next to him as Hunter demanded millions in payment. While some Democrats now admit that Hunter was selling the “illusion” of influence and access to his father, these figures clearly believed they were getting more than an illusion. That includes one Ukrainian businessman who reportedly described Hunter as dumber than his dog.
Third, specific demands were made on Hunter, including dealing with the threat of a Ukrainian prosecutor to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, where Hunter was given a lucrative board position. Five days later, Joe Biden forced the Ukrainians to fire the prosecutor, even though State Department and intelligence reports suggested that progress was being made on corruption. Likewise, despite warnings from State Department officials that Hunter was undermining anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine, he continued to receive high-level meetings with then-Secretary of State John Kerry and other State Department officials.
Fourth, Hunter repeatedly stated in emails that he paid his father as much as half of what he earned. There also are references to deals that included free office space and other perks for Joe Biden and his wife; other emails reference how Joe and Hunter Biden would use the same accounts and credit cards. Beyond those alleged direct benefits, Joe Biden clearly benefited from money going to his extended family.
Fifth, there is evidence of alleged criminal conduct by Hunter that could be linked to covering up these payments, from the failure to pay taxes to the failure to register as a foreign lobbyist. What is not established is the assumption by many that Joe Biden was fully aware of both the business dealings and any efforts to conceal them.
The White House is reportedly involved in marshaling the media to swat down any further investigation. In a letter drafted by the White House Counsel’s office, according to a CNN report media executives were told they need to “ramp up their scrutiny” of House Republicans “for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies.” It is a dangerous erosion of separation between the White House and the president’s personal legal team. Yet, many in the media have previously followed such directions from the Biden team — from emphasizing the story that the laptop might be “Russian disinformation” to an unquestioning acceptance of the president’s denial of any knowledge of his son’s dealings.
Notably, despite the vast majority of media echoing different defenses for the Bidens for years, the American public is not buying it. Polls show that most Americans view the Justice Department as compromised and Hunter Biden as getting special treatment for his alleged criminal conduct. According to a recent CNN poll, 61% of Americans believe Joe Biden was involved in his family’s business deals with China and Ukraine; only 1% say he was involved but did nothing wrong.
The American public should not harbor such doubts over corruption at the highest levels of our government. Thus, the House impeachment inquiry will allow Congress to use the very apex of its powers to force disclosures of key evidence and resolve some of these troubling questions. It may not result in an impeachment, but it will result in greater clarity. Indeed, it is that very clarity that many in Washington may fear the most from this inquiry.
Jonathan Turley, an attorney, constitutional law scholar and legal analyst, is the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at The George Washington University Law School.
Recently, Jacob Hornberger wrote 2 essays about reducing domestic mass killings. Below are some condensed paragraphs from his essays. I have edit some of the paragraphs to make the text shorter.
Given the recent spate of killings in the United States, the response of the gun-control crowd has been predictable. “These shootings show, once again, why we need gun control in America.”
Never mind that Switzerland is awash in the private ownership of guns and there aren’t regular mass killings there. And never mind that California’s strict gun-control laws have not prevented mass killings there. When it comes to gun ownership, logic and analysis are in short supply within the gun-control crowd.
The real issue is one that the gun-control crowd is loath to address: What is it that is causing so much violence in America?
There are two major causes of violence in America.
One is the drug war. Legalize drugs and you immediately terminate all the cartels, drug gangs, turf battles, and drug-war violence.
The other major cause of violence in America is that the federal government is the world’s biggest killing machine. We don’t know how many foreigners the Pentagon and the CIA have killed in the last 60 years, but it has to number in the millions. Martin Luther King was right when he said that the U.S. government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.
The notion has been that so long as the killings were taking place “over there,” they would have little or no impact here. Americans could go about their daily lives and the Pentagon and the CIA could engage in their mass killing sprees in foreign countries.
Those mass killings “over there” have seeped into the subconsciousness’s of Americans.
The biggest effect of America’s overseas killing machine has been on the off-kilter people here at home. Ordinarily, they would just be living their lives a little weirdly but without bothering anyone. But now they are engaged in what amounts to copycat killings.
Thus, to end violence in America, the solution does not involve gun control. The solution is twofold:
Legalize all drugs immediately.
Immediately bring all troops home from overseas, cease all military operations in foreign countries, abandon all foreign U.S. military bases, and terminate all foreign aid, including weaponry and money.
From his second essay
A prerequisite to ending the massive violence that afflicts American society is dismantling the federal killing machine. By wreaking death, injury, suffering, and destruction on millions of people in foreign lands for the past several decades, the Pentagon and the CIA have triggered something inside off-kilter people here at home that has caused them to copy the federal killing sprees in foreign lands.
Americans must recognize that the federal government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. Too many Americans are loath to acknowledge the existence of this killing machine, much less call for its dismantling.
An example is an article “Timothy McVeigh’s Dreams Are Coming True” by Michelle Goldberg that appeared in 5/8/2023 New York Times. Goldberg states that the popularity of McVeigh’s extreme rightwing ideology is growing and is usually behind ideologically driven mass killings. Goldberg uses her article to make the standard call for gun control.
What is revealing about Goldberg’s piece is the absence of three words: Ruby Ridge and Waco. How can anyone write about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma bombing without mentioning Ruby Ridge and Waco?
At sentencing, McVeigh stated it was the federal massacres at Ruby Ridge and Waco that motivated him to commit the Oklahoma City bombing. If the feds had not attacked Randy Weaver and killed his wife Vickie at Ruby Ridge and if they had not gassed and incinerated those people at Waco, McVeigh would never have committed the Oklahoma City bombing.
McVeigh was tried for murder, condemned as a ruthless killer, and sentenced to death. Yet, the behavior of federal agents who killed Vickie Weaver and the Branch Davidians was ignored.
Goldberg says that American rightwing groups hail the tyrannical rightwing regime of Chilean General Augusto Pinochet. She leaves out of her analysis that the U.S. government inspired and supported the military coup that violently ousted the democratically elected president and then ardently supported Pinochet when his goons rounded up 60,000 innocent people, tortured and raped them, and killed or disappeared 3,000 of them.
The mainstream media’s response to the 9/11 attacks was no different. Immediately after those attacks, U.S. officials declared that the terrorists hated America for its “freedom and values.” It was a position that the U.S. mainstream press wholeheartedly embraced.
The rationale was a lie. The terrorists had struck because they hated the federal killing machine, a machine that had contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children from U.S. sanctions on Iraq. Everyone condemned the terrorists, but one would be hard-pressed to find any commentary in the mainstream press criticizing the federal killing machine’s sanctions-related murder of those Iraqi children.
The same holds true for U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it.”
After a foreign terrorist shot several CIA personnel in their cars while they were driving into CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia, in 1993, he was captured, brought to trial, and convicted. At his sentencing hearing, he said he was retaliating for the death and destruction that the CIA and the Pentagon had been wreaking in the Middle East. He was condemned for being a ruthless killer, but there was no criticism of the federal killing machine that had motivated him to act.
In 1993, terrorists struck the World Trade Center. When one of them was brought to trial, he too cited the death and destruction that the federal killing machine had been wreaking in the Middle East as the motivating factor in the WTC attack. He too was condemned as a ruthless killer but there wasn’t a peep of protest against the federal killing machine.
A problem we face in this country is the fact that all too many people are loath to confront the federal killing machine, much less bring it to an end. That’s because they consider the Pentagon and the CIA to be a patriotic god, one whose massive killings, they believe, keep us “safe.” But if we really want to bring an end to the massive violence that afflicts our society, it is necessary to confront what Martin Luther King called “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” acknowledge its evil nature, dismantle it, and restore our founding governmental system of a limited-government republic.
